Average tax burden for Lowell High project? Over $8G

LOWELL -- The average homeowner will pay at least $8,790 more in property taxes, over the course of 30 years, in order to build a new high school near Cawley Stadium.

To pay for downtown option three, a renovation and expansion of the current school, it would cost the same homeowner at least $8,430, according to the most recent estimates.

The battle over the high school's location has drawn attention away from the cost of what will be the most expensive public school ever built in Massachusetts.

Only a small portion of respondents in surveys distributed by the Coalition for a Better Acre ranked the tax impact as their most important concern about the new high school, said Yun-Ju Choi, the organization's executive director.

"People are not very aware of how it actually impacts them," she said of the cost.

While definitive numbers won't be available until a contractor is hired, the city administration has already looked into ways to ease the tax burden on residents, particularly seniors.

Rather than spreading the project debt out on taxpayers evenly over its 30-year lifespan, the high school debt could be back-loaded to ensure that younger families, who will make the most use of the high school, pick up more of the cost than seniors.

Under the city's current plan, the Cawley school's debt service would add $18 onto residents' tax bills in 2020 for every $100,000 of assessed value of their homes.

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A $200,000 home's tax bill would go up $36, for example, while a $500,000 home's bill would increase $90.

In 2021 and 2022, taxes would increase $36 per $100,000 of assessed value. At the peak of the debt service's impact, which would begin around 2026, taxes would go up around $121 per $100,000 of assessed value.

Taxes would be an additional $242 for a $200,000 home and $605 for a $500,000 home.

"This would be a strategy we could use to try to push out the debt service and try to have an impact in helping seniors," said Conor Baldwin, the city's chief financial officer, adding, "We will try to mitigate the impact as best we can once it's time to sell the debt, and we'll use all the tools in the toolbox to do that."

Those figures are based on the most recent estimate to build a five-story, $336 million school near Cawley Stadium. The city would be responsible for $149 million of that, while the Massachusetts School Building Authority would pay for the rest.

The estimate does not include an additional $11 million in improvements to the roadways, sidewalks, parks, and water and sewer lines that city officials would be necessary for the school to be built at Cawley.

The City Council voted 5-4 on June 20 to relocate the high school to Cawley Stadium, but the MSBA has put the project on hold until after the Nov. 7 elections, which could reshape the City Council.

Supporters of the Cawley location, like Councilor Rodney Elliott, have argued that the current high school could be redeveloped and put on the tax rolls, offsetting some of the construction costs.

Some developers have expressed interest in the old school buildings, while others have cautioned that it would be a daunting project with no certainty of success.

School Superintendent Salah Khelfaoui has also expressed a desire to hold on to portions of the school for administrative space, which could still result in savings because the school district currently rents space downtown for its administrative offices. Cawley supporters also say moving the school will free up spaces in downtown parking garages.

But the real answer to the cost dilemma would be to negotiate a better reimbursement rate from the MSBA, according to Elliott.

While the city has sufficient excess levy capacity to move forward with the high school -- meaning it can raise taxes enough to pay for it without breaking state law -- the project would seriously limit Lowell's ability to replace aging facilities like the police and fire stations in the near future.

"We're not even close to being able to afford either (high school) project," Elliott said. "The reimbursement ratio has got to change."

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